Earnings Call: H1 2021

Aug 5, 2021

Good evening, and welcome to the HKT 2021 Results Presentation. Joining us are Susanna Hui, Group Managing Director and Evan Wong, Chief Financial Officer. We'll start with the presentation followed by Q and A. And with that, I'll turn it to Susanna. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for attending our interim results announcement for the HKT. During first half of the year, while Hong Kong continued to see dips in daily infections and obviously the local economy also starting to show initial signs of recovery. We are pleased to report that HAT has indeed survived the fight and emerged stronger and reported resumed growth in all areas, as you can see from the first slide here. Revenue improved by 7% with EBITDA rising by 3% and AFF expanding by 2%. As such, HKT has announced an interim distribution of HKD0.37 which represents a 2% increase from last year. This solid performance reflects the scale and resilience of our diversified business portfolio, our strong fixed and mobile network proposition, our constant alertness to rapidly changing market dynamics, our responsiveness to evolving customer needs, our digital initiatives, both internal and external, as well as our relentless focus on OpEx and productivity. Moving on to the next slide. As the world navigated through the pandemic, people have embraced whole new ways to live and to work, accelerating the digital adoption on all fronts, including shopping, entertainment, payment and medical. Accordingly, HKT has been augmenting its core connectivity services with new digital businesses in adjacencies showing nascent growth. Examples include the Club, our loyalty platform, which now converged the Redeem and Shop experience and riding on our extensive customer base and personalized offers through analytics, hopefully creating a flywheel effect to drive traffic and spending going forward. We also have Fintech, which includes our tap and go mobile wallet, providing payment and financial services to consumers and merchants. Telemedicine platform, our Doctor Go, is also quickly expanding into the MedTech digital ecosystem. I'll be able to share with you more details in my presentation later. Turning to mobile first. Our postpaid base continued to expand during the first half to over 3,260,000, comprising a sustained growth of our premium 1010 customer base and indeed reflecting the demand for our superior network quality and premium customer service. Our continued efforts in customer retention and deepened engagement via the club also led to a historically low churn of 0.7%. Despite the persistent roaming hangover, which obviously will not improve until travel resumes, the first half saw strong growth in local services revenue, which improved by 5% on the back of a 3% increase in local ARPU, which honestly more than compensate the roaming vacuum evident in the first half. The ARPU increase was driven by our growing 5 gs adoption. Moving on to the next slide. As evident from the results here, our efforts in driving 5 gs adoption are indeed bearing fruits. As at the end of June, our 5 gs customer base reached 454,000 and continue to grow throughout July, hitting 528,000 by July end, which represents now a 16% penetration. I believe that we have the largest number of customers in the market, and our target is to reach at least a 20% penetration by year end. Importantly, customer upgrades to 5 gs led to an ARPU uplift of around $70 as well as new value added services and revenue opportunities. For example, our CSL 5 gs AR Lens app is acting now as a sales channel for partners and merchants, both online to offline and online to online as well. In strengthening customer interaction via location based messages as well as gamifications, we now have more than 390 merchants and over 150,000 registered users who regularly use our AR Lens platform to get the latest offers and merchant coupons. If we are to talk about our mobile strengths, we need to talk about our strong network proposition. Our market leadership in 5 gs is indeed testament to our clear superiority of our 5 gs network. Since the launch of our 5 gs in April last year, our 5 gs network have already achieved a near territory wide outdoor as well as a very extensive indoor coverage by the end of last year. And we are the 1st to provide seamless coverage along the 6 major MTR lines. And by June this year, we had extended the entire MTR system coverage, including the new Tunmar line. And in the first half, we further extended our coverage to the most popular hiking trails and remote scenic spots, which is increasingly important as more and more Hong Kong people turn to outdoor activities during the pandemic. Of particular note is that we are the only mobile network operator using dedicated 2,100 megahertz 5 gs spectrum across the MTR system, while the 4 gs spectrum is specifically dedicated to 4 gs users, unlike the dynamic spectrum sharing that the other operators are using. So this will be able to ensure high speed and stability for our 5 gs customers without compromising the experience of existing 4 gs users. At the end of the day, the penetration of 5 gs right now is 16%, as I said. So a huge a vast majority of the users are still using 4 gs, and it's very important to preserve the user experience of the 4 gs as well. Another highlight of our strength of network is the fact that we have deployed a lot of massive MIMO active antenna over a number of locations, right now exceeding 300, which is the most among the local operators in Hong Kong. This is in addition to the traditional passive antenna so that the network can support large number of users to enjoy consistently high speeds concurrently. Turning to the enterprise and public sectors. Obviously, alongside the new 5 gs opportunities on the consumer front, in terms of encouraging 5 gs adoption amongst SMEs, we are also supporting off grid initiatives. And in the enterprise and public sectors, we believe that there exists huge potential, in particular, certain verticals. And let me share with you a few of these verticals here. Firstly, it's a health care industry. We are working with many, many hospitals in Hong Kong to leverage the 5 gs infrastructure in terms of the Internet of Medical Things as well as other applications in hospital for remote consultation, manager and mentoring as well as other operation support. As of today, a total of 15 hospital contracts were signed up. The other vertical is obviously the property vertical. Shopping mall operators as well as property developers are also using 5 gs to enable smart applications in order to provide a better experience for shoppers, residents and tenants. And right now, we have over 30 smart property projects in progress, which, of course, will continue to contribute to top line and EBITDA in the coming 1 or 2 years. Another important vertical is construction. Customers are using 5 gs combined with robotics, drones, IoT and all that to ensure safety as well as to monitor the progress and quality of the construction sites. Now not just 5 gs applications. The new normal has created an insatiable appetite from large enterprise customers as well as SMEs to digitalize their front end and back end business processes. As a trusted partner, our HKT Enterprise Solutions team has been winning many projects during the first half, ranging from new infrastructure installations as well as mission critical digital transformation projects as well. Of particular high demand evident from the first half are cloud collaboration applications, security as a service, for instance, multi cloud and multi service SD WAN. And HKT is able to provide a one stop shop for integrated solutions in order to provide increased differentiation and stickiness for our corporate customers. With service reliability becoming increasingly important, we continue to add new logos to our portfolio as well as witnessing a lot of win backs from our competitors as well. Turning to our international business. As connectivity and cloud intersect, our international business arm, PCCW Global, have been transforming from a traditional global carrier into a technology led service leader. What do we mean by technology led service leader? We have built a software enabled platform labeled console connect that provides direct connectivity between data centers, cloud zones, SAAS applications, virtual machines and IoT devices on an automated on demand and secure basis, underpinned by our global transmission layer of submarine cables as well as IP infrastructure. This platform now provides interconnectivity across 50 countries, 4 50 data centers around the world and 60 cloud zones. And of course, we are continuing expanding. We are now positioning console connect as a platform ecosystem to market, to sell and service online. Turning to our broadband business. Despite a significant reduction in COVID cases in Hong Kong, many companies are still accommodating work from home arrangement, and many schools and universities still deliver a hybrid of classes online and offline. This is indeed new normal for many people here. As such, the broadband business continue to witness keen demand with broadband network revenue increasing by 3% for the first half, reflecting very strong demand for our reliable high speed fiber to the home, which grew by 7% during the 1st 6 months. Our home WiFi router solutions also enable customers to enjoy a quality in home broadband experience. These solutions have penetrated 22% of our customer base and provided a ARPU uplift of over $90 Also, we are continuously selling our smart living home solutions total package to property developers for new residential projects. And we have already signed up 69 developers across 160 projects since launch. And these will again, we'll be able to contribute to revenue and EBITDA in the coming 2 to 3 years. And talking about our network, we always stress that we have a very strong network proposition, both mobile and fixed. And in fact, fixed and mobile convergence is our strength. So during the pandemic, where people spend more time at home, it has been proven that fixed broadband is resilient. Fixed is indeed resilient. As I said before, we at HAT offer a very strong network proposition. And this is our unique differentiation in terms of the fixed mobile convergence. So while our fiber to the home network, leveraging on the previous investment that we have made over the past many years, now covers 90% of homes, and we continue to progressively build out our extensive infrastructure. Furthermore, we support the government initiative to expand broadband to rural, remote villages and so on, which is planned to contribute revenue for the next coming 2 to 3 years as well. And in areas where fiber is not permissible, for instance, the old buildings, we have complemented service via 5 gs wireless to the home, lifting our integrated high speed broadband access to over 97% of homes in Hong Kong. Now turning to NOW TV. NOW TV, we have consolidated NOW TV starting from, I think, Q4 last year. So during the first half of the year, the key highlight for NOW TV is obviously the broadcast of Euro 2020. We have indeed introduced a number of innovative viewing experiences, such as a 4 ks Ultra HD, Watch Party feature that allows friends to interact virtually while watching programs on the new on the Now Player app. This had, in fact, increased viewership and solicited a lot of exciting response from fans, also overwhelming response from fans indeed. And we saw viewership exceeding the previous euro by more than 72%. And we have also collaboration with our popular homegrown artist from VUE TV, which have also expanded audience base to non football fans. And on top of these new programs, ancillary programs, we have innovative advertising solutions on these fringe programs. And therefore, despite a relatively difficult, challenging macro market in the first half, advertising revenue also surged by 48% for NOW TV. On the content side, we continue to grow the different contents and especially in the face of growing selection of D2C entertainment choices in the market, which obviously creates a lot of competition, NOW TV is focusing on delivering a tailored content, including some self curated NOW True and NOW Studio, and we will continue obviously to collaborate with MEW TV as well on some of the local content. As home of sports, we continue to consolidate our leadership position in live sports. The good news is that we have secured a broadcast of Champions League for another 3 years and providing comprehensive coverage of the recently very popular Olympics, Talk of the Town, which has attracted significant local viewership with success of Hong Kong athletes. We are also achieving greater engagement and stickiness by improving our home menu and enhancing our UI UX and enabling multiple user profiles as well as rewarding customers with our Cloud points. We have also continued to grow subscriber base on our OTT platform, Now Yee, which attracts a lot of millennials and enabling the sale of seasonal pass and events pass, which, of course, together with our broadband and mobile business, provide us with a lot of synergy to cross sell. Turning now to the new digital business, the club convergence of loyalty and e commerce. Leveraging our extensive telco customer interactions, obviously, and deep first party data, we continue to invest in this loyalty program and also expand the currently available product categories from handset electronics products to nonelectronics products. The club also provides a digital platform for members to shop and redeem together using club points and cash and also provides a platform for our merchant partners to cross sell different products. We are also providing insights into customer different customer preferences, And this will be enabling us to offer personalized offers for both telco services and non telco spending. And recent result shows that the club had approaching 1,000,000 unique monthly visitors in the first half, which is 3 times of that in the previous period. And the GMV also doubled for the period. Aided by Insight, we are also we have also recently launched a health and wellness program app, which would enable us to supercharge the digital insurance distribution as well. Turning to the next slide is our have and go mobile wallet. Now we are one of the 4 platform chosen to help distribute consumption vouchers in support of the government initiative to help boost the local retail spending as well as promoting e payment. The number of customer accounts has risen to 3,500,000 by the end of July. And on the merchant side, the smart point of sales terminal orders by our merchants have increased 7 times as well. HealthTech, our telemedicine platform, Doctor. Go. Since launch, we have now accumulated 218,000 registered users as of now. We continue to drive expansion of partner ecosystems with telemedicine at its core. A lot has yet to be done in terms of increasing the activation as well as encouraging repeated use. So the service scopes now are on top of the GP also includes mental health consultation and chronic health disease management, for example, hypertension care as well in order to drive up, as I say, user activity and recurring transactions. We have also partnerships with a number of insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies to expand channels for customer acquisition. And a health related e commerce platform was also launched in June, initially focusing on selling vaccination packages and also body checkup packages as well. Turning to the next slide. As a corporate citizen, we see our role in caring for our employees and also the community at large. And in support of the public vaccination program, we provide PayLeave for our employees to encourage taking the jab and offer free remote mental health counseling via Doctor. Goh as well. During the first half, we also rolled out fiber connections to rural villages and together with NGOs in Hong Kong, we are also providing wireless broadband to subdivided flats free of charge. To promote diversity, we offer scholarships for female students majoring in STEM and Tech. Environmental protection and reduction in carbon emission are all important subjects nowadays. And on this front, we completed the installation of solar panels at 1 of our exchange buildings, and more are to come in terms of installation of solar panels in a lot of other exchanges and these are in the pipeline. These are just some examples of our CSR initiatives, and we will continue to enhance our program going forward. The highlight. Despite the challenging macro factors over the past 18 months or so, HKT has demonstrated resilience and operational continuity due to our business breadth and scale, our constant alertness to rapidly changing market dynamics, our responsiveness to evolving customer needs. Indeed, we survive the fight and emerge stronger. Near term, we expect customer 5 gs upgrades and the digitalization needs of our enterprise customers will continue to deliver growth. And medium term, we'll work hard on unleashing the potential within our digital business, which I have covered just now in order to create value for shareholders. With that, I will pass to Evan to cover the financials. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Susanna. Let's first have a recap of the key financial highlights of the group during the first half of twenty twenty one. AFF, as discussed, we have shown a growth by 2% during this period to US298 $1,000,000,000 Our total revenue was also up by 7% to around US2 $1,000,000,000 for the period, included in which our service revenue also increased by 3 percent to US1 $81,000,000,000 The growth is mainly driven by the continuous strong demand on our broadband and local data connectivity services, the encouraging 5 gs uptake on the mobile side as well as the full consolidation of our NOW TV business since this period. This growth momentum has fully offset the negative impact brought by the reduced roaming revenue under the global travel restrictions as well as the volatility in terms of our international voice wholesale business. At the same time, riding on the strong 5 gs handset sales during the period, our mobile handset sales also surged by 58% to US196 $1,000,000 in the first half. So as a whole, the EBITDA of HKD Group has increased by 3% in the first half to US733 $1,000,000 And for the net profit, the amount is US244 $1,000,000 remained fairly steady as compared with the same period last year. Looking into the details of our TSS segment. On the right hand side of the slide, you can see that our low code TSS revenue has increased by 5% year on year to US888 million dollars In mid, our broadband and local data business continue to be the key growth driver with the revenue surged by 5% to US497 $1,000,000 On one hand, our superior infrastructure and network has ensured strong and resilient demand from customers under the new remote working and learning arrangement in the society. On the other hand, underpinned by the accelerated pace of digitalization of enterprise customers as well as the public sector, We continue to be successful in securing various material project wins during the period, which helped to fuel our continuous growth in our local TSS revenue. And if to include the international business, the revenue of which being affected by the volatility on our international voice wholesale business, our total TSS revenue for the period was US1.313 billion dollars But given the minimal margin contribution attributed to the voice wholesale business, our total TSS EBITDA for the period has still shown a growth by 1% to US419 million dollars with an EBITDA margin cap steady at the level of 37%. Turning to our mobile business. Under the global travel restriction, as discussed, our roaming revenue was still under pressure during the period. However, we are still able to maintain our total mobile service revenue at a stable level at $459,000,000 thanks to the encouraging 5 gs uptake as highlighted by Susana just now. If to exclude the roaming and IDD revenue, our local mobile service revenue actually has increased by 5% year on year. Our postpaid subscriber pool has further expanded to over 3,260,000 by end of June with the postpaid ARPU continue to be on a rising trend from HKD184 by end of last year to HKD887 by end of June. At the same time, our sales of handset, as mentioned, has increased by 58 percent to US893 $1,000,000 and therefore, the total revenue for Mobile segment in the first half was US655 million dollars It grew by 12% year on year. And the EBITDA also increased by 1% to US266 million dollars for the period and the Surface EBITDA margin was also kept steady at 58%. On our Pay TV business, NOW TV has been integrated into HKT Group since the Q4 last year such that it has a full 6 month financial contribution in this period. The revenue and EBITDA of NOW TV in the first half were US158 $1,000,000 and US27 $1,000,000 respectively. In particular, its advertising revenue has surged by 48% year on year, benefiting from the successful broadcasting of Euro 2020 as well as the recovery of ad spending by certain enterprise customers during the period. Our Now Ear streaming services have also gained increasing popularity, such that our total installed customer base for the NOW TV business as a whole has expanded to over 1,350,000 by end of June. And if to compare this to the same period last year as reported under PCCW Group, our EBITDA of US27 $1,000,000 in current period represents a growth by 7% year on year. This shows the initial benefit realized from the operation synergies under our core pay platform in terms of both marketing initiatives and cost management. If to take a closer look at our operating expenses for TSS and Mobile Business, we are able to achieve an overall OpEx saving by 7% year on year on a total basis, thanks to our continuous effort in process digitalization as well as tightened cost control. On the other hand, we continue to invest in certain new and growing digital business platform such as the club, the fintech as well as the health tab platforms, so as to drive the medium to long term growth momentum of the group as a whole. And also after including the OpEx expenditure as incurred by the Pay TV business, our total OpEx spending for the period was US305 $1,000,000 Apart from OpEx, we are also monitoring on a very close basis on our capital expenditure, such that as you can see, our total CapEx spend in the first half of US155 million dollars was kept fairly steady as compared with the same period last year. In particular, on the TSS segment, we have achieved a CapEx saving by 9% year on year with a reduced CapEx amount of US81 million dollars This is the benefit from our extensive local fiber backbone as well as the international cable investment that we have already made over the past years. Such saving is able to meet and address the slight increase in the CapEx spending on our mobile side in the first half in respect to our 5 gs infrastructure rollout as well as the consolidation of the capital expenditure on our NOW TV business, such that our overall CapEx to revenue ratio has further moved from 8.2% as reported in the first half of last year to 7.7% in this period, which are all well contained within our 10% guidance. On the details of our adjustment flows, we have just discussed about our growth in EBITDA and steady capital expenditure. The total customer acquisition cost and license fee for this period has increased to US69 $1,000,000 mainly reflecting the consolidation of the CAC as incurred by our NOW TV business. And by the same reason, the payment for right of use asset basically representing the rental expenditure also increased slightly to US104 $1,000,000 But on the other hand, given the lowered market interest rate, in particular on the HIBOR, our cash outflow for the net finance costs paid for the period has reduced by 26% to US36 million dollars and such saving is able to compensate and offset the slight increase in our cash tax payment as well as the changes in working capital for the period. Such that as discussed, our overall AFF has increased by 2% to RMB298 1,000,000 for the first half, translating to an interim distribution of HKD0.13 per each share stable unit in Yixu. On the details of our profit and loss account, we have just gone through our revenue, OpEx and EBITDA. Our depreciation and amortization charges has increased by 10% in this period to US353 $1,000,000 On one hand, this refers to inclusion of amortization charge of customer acquisition costs as well as content costs as incurred by the Pay TV business. And on the other hand, it also includes an increase in our 5 gs license amortization. And again, due to the lower market interest rate, our P and L finance cost has also gone down by 15% to US72 $1,000,000 and the P and L income tax has increased slightly by US2 $1,000,000 such that our total net profit for the period was US244 $1,000,000 being fairly steady as compared with same period last year. Then quickly on our gearing position. Our total gross debt outstanding by end of June was around US5.56 billion dollars with the corresponding gross debt to EBITDA ratio maintained at around 3.4 times. Currently, we have a total liquidity on hand of around US1.3 billion dollars dollars including undrawn bank facilities totaling over US1 $1,000,000,000 and we continue to carry an investment grade rating at BBB and Baa2. Then on our debt maturity profile. Earlier in this year, we have completed the refinancing arrangement for all the bank facilities originally maturing in this year, such that you all can see we don't have any further immediate refinancing need at this moment. Our current portion of floating rate debt out of the total is around 45% and our effective interest rate for the first half was 2.5%, which has declined as compared with over 3% in the same period last year. And of course, we will continue to monitor the market situation and the interest rate trend on a very close basis, so as to fine tune and enhance our debt structure and profile from time to time. With this, it also ends the financial review for our first half result. Thank you. Thanks. We'll take the questions now. The first question, how do you balance 5 gs adoption pace against ARPU lift? What's the mobile service revenue growth outlook for the next 6 to 12 months? Thank you for the question. Mobile service revenue growth outlook for the next 6 to 12 months. Again, as I have mentioned just now, I think roaming revenue will continue to be sort of providing a real vacuum, unless, of course, global travel restrictions start to be lifted. So we do not expect that there is a lot of upside from that one. But the local services revenue from the 5 gs migration, which I said just now, again, providing ARPU uplift of more than HKD 70 per plan. We'll continue to drive the service revenue growth, which I think that the current growth trajectory that was evident in the first half will continue. Especially in the second half, we would be able to see some more of the enterprise 5 gs applications projects to be realized as well. So again, I would say that in terms of the momentum growth momentum, it will be able to maintain what you what we report in the first half. Thank you. The next question, when do you expect the new initiatives, new digital initiatives such as the club and fintech to reach scale and will you report them separately? I think a lot of these are quite new. So we are in fact investing continuously in these new businesses. At appropriate time, we'll be able to sort of carve these out hopefully and report the at least operating metrics to all. Next question. What are the critical factors in the success of HKT Enterprise Solutions securing new projects and winning back customers? Again, I think we are our unique proposition is that we are not just providing connectivity. We are now providing a lot of end to end solutions. And as and when and indeed says a lot of customers are indeed migrating to cloud, adopting multi cloud, hybrid, on prem and cloud, a lot of these applications, including even the security as a service, cybersecurity measures and so on, do require end to end solutions for both the big corporates as well as the smaller companies. And I think HDAT Enterprise team is very well positioned to provide end to end solutions. I think this is a very unique proposition unrivaled by the other competitors. And also, I think we have built a strong alliance with a lot of partners in the entire ecosystem. So as we can see from the past, a lot of the bigger projects, we are partnering with different service providers, different business partners. For instance, in smart parking, we are partnering with a French provider vendor as well. So I think the key now is that alliance, collaboration with ecosystem partners and end to end solutions to the reliability of our network, reliability of our service. Next question, do you think the decline in local telephony services will continue? Or is this just a product of the current tough business environment? Local telephony as in the fixed line business, I think the trend the downtrend will continue. There are a number of factors affecting this. Obviously, one is the generally lower ARPU on the residential fixed line. 2 is obviously mobile substitution. We have, of course, in the past used the iTablets to maintain relevance to continue the relevance at home. But still, I think mobile substitution is a trend. Thirdly, we also see some of the effects of the increasing trend of immigration happening, especially for the past few months. So we see some line termination due to families immigrating abroad. And finally, I think in terms of the SME and the business consolidating because of the relatively tough, challenging market environment, that also affects the fixed line as well. This trend will continue, but it will be able to pick up a bit on the enterprise side, on the commercial side when the economy picks up, hopefully, in the coming year or so. The next question is, what is your outlook for the broadband business? And do you see growth potentially being faster in the second half? I think broadband business from the consumer side, the trend will continue in terms of growth, in terms of also the WiFi home WiFi router solutions and so on, which will contribute to the revenue growth. I think the potential also comes on the commercial side as well in terms of the local data and all that. And that sometimes can be lumpy, sometimes can happen faster in the second half or maybe in the first half of next year, depending on the project as well. Next question. Do you expect the $70 5 gs ARPU uplift to be maintained in the next 6 to 12 months? We certainly hope to maintain this ARPU uplift in the coming 6 months. But as we move down the ladder in terms of increasing penetration to different segments of the 5 gs. It is inevitable that this $70 may become $60, dollars 50 and so on. And it also depends on the market dynamics as well. But all in all, I think definitely the 5 gs migration will add to the service revenue in terms of the mobile. Next question. What's your view on the current competition in both the mobile and fixed broadband business? I think competition is more or less the same. There are still that many operators on both mobile and fixed side on both mobile and fixed broadband side. Situation consumer sentiment and so on has been challenging starting from last year. So I guess all of us all of the market players have been relatively disciplined. I think bottom line is important to all of us, and I certainly hope that it will continue. Next question is, given the solid first half performance, what is your guidance for the full year AFF? As I said, I think certainly, sitting at where we are now, I think we are quite confident that the growth trajectory in the first half would continue. And so it would at least be the same in terms of growth, at least be 2%, if not more, with regards to the AFF. That was our final question. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you.